1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to lights that can be worn on a user's head to provide illumination to an area of work, and, more particularly, to a headlight for surgeons, dentists, or other medical personnel or craftsmen. The light uses two independent lamp housings, working cooperatively to converge light beams at a predetermined distance from the LED light sources.
It is essential in certain medical procedures that the physician, surgeon, or dentist has his or her hands free for manipulating various surgical, diagnostic, or therapeutic instruments. At the same time, the particular part of the patient's body that the physician or surgeon is treating must be adequately illuminated. For these purposes, doctors and surgeons have heretofore utilized surgical headlights, some of which require the user to remain attached via fiber optic cable to a free standing light source, and/or to a power outlet for an energy source.
Battery powered, head mounted lamps utilizing an incandescent lamp as a light have also been used. Typically, the high power consumption, relatively low light output, high weight, and short battery life of such devices of the prior art have made their use difficult, uncomfortable, or otherwise unsatisfactory.
Even with such configurations, however, the amount of light impinging upon the work area can be inadequate. Moreover, to provide adequate illumination, designs of the prior art typically use incandescent lamps, which generate excessive amounts of heat that may dry out patient tissue and cause the surgeon discomfort. Power consumption of incandescent lamps is also high, necessitating relatively short-life, large capacity batteries.
Some of the problems associated with incandescent lamps may be overcome by using light emitting diodes (LEDs). Some prior art apparatus have used relatively high power (e.g., 5 watt) LEDs to generate sufficient light output. Such LEDs typically generate so much heat that a heat sink is required. For a 5 W LED, the heat sink generally must be four times larger than that used for a 1 W LED.
Heat sinks by their very nature are heavy and the added weight on such a heat sink contributes to discomfort for the wearer of the head mounted lamp. In addition, a single light source (i.e., LED) disperses the light beams and may, depending on the nature of the work area, result in obscuring shadows on the work area. Consequently, despite the obvious advantage of a personal, head-mounted light source, the numerous disadvantages and shortcomings of surgical headlamps of the prior art have kept such devices from becoming widely used by surgeons and other medical and dental practitioners.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Several attempts to solve the problems described hereinabove have been made in the prior art. For example, published U.S. patent application 2002/0186557, published Dec. 12, 2002 for HEAD APPARATUS WITH LIGHT EMITTING DIODES by Banning Lary et al., teaches a head mounted lamp assembly with a plurality of LEDs mounted in a rectangular array across the forehead of the wearer. Such an apparatus provides a broad, distributed field of illumination suitable for general work but fails to provide the high-intensity, focused light beam of the apparatus of the present invention.
U.S. Published patent application 2003/0067769, published Apr. 10, 2003 for MULTIPLE LED LIGHT SOURCE by Scott Gilpin, teaches a multi-LED lamp housing for wearing on the head. A single housing contains an array of LEDs but no light directing structure is disclosed. Such an apparatus is again suitable for generalized illumination and the intensity is believed to be higher than the illumination provided by LARY et al. Still, the GILPIN apparatus lacks any focusing mechanism and probably would not provide the high intensity illumination required for surgical or similar applications.
U.S. Published patent application 2003/0161152, published Aug. 28, 2003 for AMBIENT LIGHTING SYSTEM FOR SURGICAL LIGHTS by David Jesurun et al., teaches a LED lighting system for providing ambient light in an operating theater. The light system uses interacting reflectors to direct light from multiple LEDs but does not provide a high intensity, head-mounted, focusable surgical headlamp.
None of the prior art references are seen to teach or suggest, either individually or in any combination, the head mounted, plural LED, focusable surgical headlamp of the present invention.